Snapdragon

This was cute! It's a nice, sweet story about embracing your weirdness and letting it connect you to others rather than separate you. It's all a bit surface-level and pat, with characters all immediately and unequivocally accepting different gender identities, sexualities, spiritualities, etc. But it's a middle-grade book and it's meant to be charming comfort media, not hard-hitting psycho-social dissection. And it's nice that lots of kids who deal with exclusion will see themselves depicted in a joyous, loving story where good wins out. For me, this is kind of a 3-star, but taking into account the intended audience, I say it's a solid 4-star.

I went into this knowing very little about the story. I even forgot about Kat writing for Lumberjanes (a series I liked initially, then fell off over time). The story immediately grabbed my attention and kept me thinking about the story between breaks.

The realism of the characters drew me in instantly. Throughout the entire story, the characters all had their own unique and deep personalities, and they seemed like people I would have been friends with in school. The body shapes fit with normal people, and the gender expressiveness was incredible. I can't get the faces out of my mind.

Generally this was nothing like what I expected, and more than I could have hoped for. Definitely one of my favorite books.

OH MY GOD

this is hands down the BEST graphic novel i've read this year if not in general!!!!

theres literally everything you would ever want from a graphic novel for younger audiences: gender-noncomfirming characters, trans characters, lesbians, and all of this while keeping an open mind and never ONCE going into detail about the suffering and hate the queer characters get. they are only met with love and understanding.

above all else this story is about loving yourself the way you are and finding joy in the little things. the metaphor of road kill and finding them love and a home after suffering the worst kind of way to die is so heartwarming.

im LITERALLY ugly crying as a type this because it was so good. mark my words, however, this is not a sad book. i'm only crying because its so wholesome and everyone gets a happy ending the way stories need to be. this story gives me so much hope for the world and honestly for my own story's ending.

im gonna need 5-10 business days to emotionally recover but this story will stay with me forever.